Paideia , from the ancient Greek, is the process
of educ ating students into their true form,
helping them realize their genuine human
nature. Not about lea rning a trade or an
art, Paideia is rather about training for true
citizen ship, for liberty (freedom) and nobility
(beauty). Through the lens of Pa ideia , the
goal of education — in architecture, landscape
architecture, interior design, design studies
— is not only mastery of subject matter.
It is the mastery of one’s own person.
Subject matter is the tool: facts, techniques,
methods and information are important,
but the goal of design education is to
understand to what effect they will be used.
I mention Paideia bec ause it is one
of those timeles s ideas helping us now to
re-imagine de sign educ ation at the B oston
Architectura l College in the face of immense
and continuing change in the culture at
large. A hundred and twenty-six years on,
folks involved with the BAC’s several school s
of design are trying to imagine what comes
next. They are trying to imagine the kind
of thinking, the kind of k nowledge and
e xperience a ne w generation must a cc es s
in order to design it. R ight now, the BAC
is undergoing tremendous rene wa l: a new
understanding of Foundation Studies, ne w
ways of delivering Education-at-a -Distance,
new project-ba sed c ommunity learning
ventures like the Solar Decathlon, new
Alternative Practice Opportunities, new
e xperience s abroad...Paideia is a good
principle to g uide our e xploration a s we
c ontinue to e volve the College.
Paideia allows us to shed some of our
old c onceptions/definitions about know-
ledge and practice. One of these is that,
somehow, designers are scientists. We are
not. We disqu alify ourselves at the out set,
says ecologist David Orr, by professing
loyalty to and affection for a sense of wonder.
This sense encompasses the sheer joy in the
created world rooted in the trust that this
world is, on bala nce, a friendly place full
of interesting life “beyond the bounda ries
of huma n e xistenc e.” R achel Carson (1984).
The definitions of science written by the
National Academy deal almost exclusively
with the creation and exercise of power.
What we are after instead is a curriculum
about design that will support in our students
the creation and exercise of wonder for life
itself : Paideia.
And Paideia is an integrative idea.
By what is integrated into our design
curriculum and its various projects, BAC
students might learn that they and their
work are part of the natural world. In the
past, in schools the world over, design st udios
were taught without referenc e to laws of
thermodynamics or ecology, and offered
students a f unda mentally faulty lesson: that
physics and ecology had nothing to do with
lives lived in buildings. We are saddled today
with an obsolete building stock that is the
result of just that lesson: many of our fore-
bears concentrated on building form without
paying attention to building performance.
Paideia is helping us rethink this f unda-
mentally misg uided les son.
Fina lly, Paideia in design helps us
a sk: What kind of huma n relationships do
our buildings and their spaces encourage?
To build an understanding that can answer
this question we are thinking of ways
to question the Nike advertising slogan,
“Just do it!” Does this notion fail to take into
account the consequences of its own actions,
possibly including foreign lab or practices
a nd the use of unrecyclable materials?
Paideia urges a different set of slog ans that
describe a design curriculum in which our
students will just think about it, just c onsider
its consequence s, just work out its f unding,
just understand its construction, just imagine
how people will feel a round it for the next
few generations, just imagine how to solve
for the future.
Paideia advocates an understanding
of de sign that is about transformation.
Transformation is what we seek to encour age
a t the BAC: the tra nsformation of our stu-
dents, of our shared physic al rea lity, the
c ontinuing tra nsformation of the College
itself in the direction of coherenc e. We are
a fter a design educ ation more c oherent with
living systems, more c oherent with how we
u nderstand the natural world, more coherent
with what is to come as we design our way
out of the current global breakdown. A s you
read this letter, a s you ponder the pos sibili-
ties of Paideia , I hope your imagination leads
you to envision your own c ontribution to a
newly created world of understanding at the
BAC. You’re c erta inly invited!
letter from the dean : paideia
fEaTuRE ] solaR dEcaThloN
Jeff Stein, Head of Architecture and Dean
Paideia advocates an understanding
of design that is about transformation
and is an integrative idea.
dean Jeff stein
49
pRacTIcE